by Salman Hameed

More than ten years ago, talk shows on new private television channels in Pakistan were a breath of fresh air. For the first time, you could hear multiple opinions on all sorts of topics. The quality of those early talk shows was often quite good. But then, the open format of talk shows became more and more chaotic. If the guests themselves would not get into a verbal fight, the anchors would often egg them on. It was all good for rating.

Pervez Hoodbhoy (full disclosure that he is a good friend of mine) is often on the talk shows to present the increasingly limited liberal views. You pick a topic: Minority rights, blasphemy law, issue of problematic contents in textbooks, or even in the sad saga of the claim of the miraculous "water-kit" - a water-powered car that would solve all of Pakistan's energy crisis. As you can imagine, Pervez's positions are not the crowd pleasers.

So now we have this episode where Pervez and a journalist Ansar Abbasi got into a verbal fight. It is awful! I think both of them are way way out of line. This is not the way to have a conversation - and Ansar Abbasi kept calling Pervez a "Jahil" - a particularly pejorative term for an ignorant (in fact, he kept on saying that how come they let this jahil let teach in a college). Pervez walked out after that. The three minute brouhaha is below.

But let me just contextualize Abbasi a bit. Ansar Abbasi is the journalist who complained that the new 10th grade Urdu textbook (Punjab Board) does not contain sufficient Islam references. Oh but in his Urdu column, he argues that this was a conspiracy to impose secularization by the Punjab government (curious note: the government in Punjab is Pakistan Muslim League - which is to the "right" of a considerably conservative political center). Pervez called him out on this past April:

At the outset, one needs to know that the withdrawn book was intended solely for the teaching of Urdu as a language, and should be judged on these grounds alone. Any book for teaching a language must introduce the student to great poets and essayists and delve into linguistic nuances and subtleties. It should not be just a supplementary text for teaching Islamic studies. Students use an entire, separate book for Islamiat. 

This episode is important for only one reason: the new Urdu reader represented an attempt, albeit a feeble one, to remove the blinkers forced upon students by General Ziaul Haq’s education fantasia. The 1980s Islamisation of education meant that every subject — languages, geography, history, social studies, chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. — could only be viewed through a narrow prism. All else was to be shunned and filtered out. It is this attempt to break loose that Mr Abbasi finds so terribly objectionable.

And now Ansar Abbasi has gone after Malala (and a tamer version in English). For what? Amongst other things, he is hurt that Malala is too soft on Salman Rushdie (she argues for freedom of speech while disagreeing with the contents of Satanic Verses, more particularly she says: "‘Is Islam such a weak religion that it cannot tolerate a book written against it? Not my Islam!”"), she talks about the rights of Ahamadis, the problems with the blasphemy law, that Pakistan lost three wars with India (which is a factual statement accepted everywhere in the world except in Pakistan's textbooks), etc. etc. Oh wait. And the horror of it all for Abbasi: She criticized Pakistan's brutal military dictator from the 1980s, General Zia ul Haq, and his "Islamization" policies that Pakistan is still dealing with. The problem is that Abbasi is a fan of Zia - and Malala's criticism of his hero really crosses him.

It is in the context of the recent Abbasi's column on Malala and the prior history of Hoodbhoy-Abbasi interaction that you should view this altercation on this "talk-show". Abbasi's regressive and often offensive views are still no excuse for Pervez to engage in this manner. This is wrong. Period. You will also notice that the anchor is simply sitting there and enjoying the fight. Shame on him as well (Fox News has nothing on these guys...). It is painful, but if you can stomach it, here is the clip:

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by Salman Hameed

There is a good chance that Malala will get a well deserved Nobel Peace Prize (even thought the prize itself has become dubious with the E.U and Obama as some of its recent winners). She is absolutely phenomenal and fearless and the Nobel prize is not for being a victim, but rather for what she has been doing for education both before and after getting shot. But she is still only 16 years of age! I first posted about her back in January 2009, when I read about her in BBC and the New York Times. Later, NYT also had a short film featuring Malala, and her cheerful personality came bustling through. Now, almost a year after she was shot in the face by the Taliban, the NYT has a brilliant and thought provoking short film about the role of her (ambitious) father and the news media in making Malala a symbol for girls education - something that provoked the Taliban. But what is amazing about the film is that it not only shows a growing independence of Malala and her transformation but also the larger cultural context of girls education in Pakistan. It also highlights contradictions in Malala's own father, and those clips add so much depth to this 10-minute video. One problem is that people not familiar with Pakistan will have a hard time distinguishing cultural norms in Swat (and in the northern parts of Pakistan in general) versus the rest of Pakistan, in particular the more urban areas. Nevertheless, take 10 minutes and watch the video below (and read the article in NYT here):

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by Salman Hameed

There is an emergency in Lahore. An elite school in Lahore has the gall to introduce a class on comparative religion. Noooo! You cannot teach a class that necessitates a respect for other religions. But thankfully a special departmental committee has worked overtime to quickly come up with a report on this dangerous situation:

"The department said the introduction of religious studies “is tantamount to mislead and confuse the young generation with complexity of topics like comparative study of religions at such a lower level”.

And the Chief Minister of Punjab has the constitution behind him:

“Article 25 of the Constitution of Pakistan is quite clear about the provision that no Pakistani citizen should be taught a religion other than his own religion”, the minister added.

Yup - the state always knows what it best for you. Oh - wait. What Article of the constitution? A helpful commentator on the article pointed the link - and here is Article 25 (thanks to one of the commentators on Express Tribune for providing the link):

25	Equality of citizens. (1) All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law. (2) There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex  32[] 32. (3) Nothing in this Article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the protection of women and children.

25A.	Right to education: The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law.

I'm sure the Chief Minister is doing all he can to make sure that all children between 5 and 16 are getting compulsory education...

But this is not what got me to this story. This did:

The Punjab Education Department has issued orders to confiscate the science book of class six of Lahore Grammar School (LGS) which the department says has obscene material which is provocative for youth.

Well what? They didn't say what the objectionable material was. I hope it didn't say that human beings of all religions share the same basic biology!! Eewww. I guess it is obscene to think that we may be made up of the same material - when it is clear that Punjab Chief Minister is made up of a rare and special material.

Since I don't know what are they referring to, can someone please find out about the nature of the objectionable material in the 6th grade science textbook? Thanks.

Here is the original story.

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by Salman Hameed

A new website has been launched with a focus on Islam and Science: An Educational Approach (thanks to Abdelaziz Gillali for sending the link). The effort is led by Nidhal Guessoum (he used to contribute to Irtiqa as well) and is a collaboration between the American University of Sharjah and the

Interdisciplinary University of Paris (though there are many more individuals from different institutions involved in it). This is an important addition to the discourse over science and Islam and I think it will be good counter to sites propagated by people like Zakir Naik,  Harun Yahya, etc. While I'm a proponent of a strong separation of science and religion, this website/project will also provide a platform for those who are seeking a synthesis and integration between science and Islam. Go check it out.

Here are its Vision and Objectives:

• Pursue the elaboration of a new synthesis between modern scientific knowledge and Muslim traditions, approaches which are removed both from easy concordism and the view according to which it is impossible to reach a fruitful harmony between those fields.
• Contribute to open a high-level dialogue between Islam and modernity, thus allowing the development of a unified and coherent understanding of the world, without conflict or dissonance.
• Propose an education and training program to Muslim scholars, who would be able to develop a modern and sophisticated Science-Islam discourse and to present these points of view in international arenas.
• Develop and broadcast, on a large international scale, a well-informed discourse on  Islam & Science, one which is reasoned and scientifically solid.
• Delineate the fruitful pathways for the development of scientific culture in the Arab/Muslim World and popularize certain philosophical implications of contemporary science towards/aiming at the elite as well as the public at large.
• Show how the Muslim tradition can be a factor of dialogue and peace.
• Particpate to a high-level inter-religious dialogue and contribute to the emergence of a “common discourse” among the world’s major religions, that can be the basis of a new form of dialogue among cultures.
• Construct a process for delineating the role of science in the search of meaning in a more and more complex globalized world, a world full of promise but one which also carries dangers and threats for future generations.
• Contribute in a spirit of dialogue and openness to reopen the question of the meaning that modern societies are facing.

Go check out and explore their website.

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by Salman Hameed

The Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies (SSiMS) and the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College are hosting a lunch talk tomorrow (Wednesday) by Elise K. Burton. Join us if you are in the area. Here are the details of the talk:


Evolution in Middle Eastern Education Policy: The View from Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia
by Elise K. Burton, PhD candidate at Harvard University

Abstract: To date, much research on the reception and teaching of evolutionary theory in Muslim societies has assumed that religious attitudes take precedence in determining whether and how evolution is publicly accepted, rejected, or taught in schools. A corollary of these assumptions has been that countries governed on Islamic theocracy models would be more averse than "secular democracies" to including evolution within their national curricula. But are Islam and secularism always the right categories of analysis? A comparative study of science education policy in Middle Eastern states found that neither Islam as a state religion, nor the level of state religiosity, was sufficient to predicting the treatment of evolution within national science curricula. These results call for a nuanced understanding of the position of science in Muslim-majority states today, and understanding that incorporates historical, political and sociological contexts alongside theology, belief, and culture.

Biographical statement: Elise K. Burton is a PhD candidate in Middle Eastern Studies & History at Harvard University. Her dissertation research examines the history of human biology research and its relationship to ethnic nationalist politics in 20th century Iran, Turkey, and Israel.

In the Adele Simmons Hall (ASH) Lobby at Hampshire College.      
A light lunch will be available at noon.

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by Salman Hameed

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting short piece that points to the International Islamic Centre for Population Studies and Research at Al-Azhar University (tip from Laura Sizer). In some ways, it is a good sign that Al-Azhar has taken a progressive stance on issues like population control, stem cells and in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Compared to this, the Catholic Church seems to be set in the medieval times. But on the other hand, I also feel that it is a problem that all of these issues have to be filtered through religious scholars. Indeed, the same university went against the donorship of sperm and eggs for reproduction. Nevertheless, we can applaud the positive steps while being on guard against any regressive actions:

Gamal Serour, founder of the International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research, is well practiced at this balancing act. 

Dr. Serour, who is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, views his position within al-Azhar as ideal for "overcoming religious obstacles to the improvement of women's health." 

When he founded the center, in 1974, many Egyptians believed that contraception was forbidden by Islam, and that family planning was a Western conspiracy to weaken Muslim nations, he says. 

"Everybody used to look at this center as the center of kuffar, nonbelievers," Dr. Serour says. It was "the center which is implementing the policies of the West, the center which is working to limit the population growth of the Muslim world." 

But "when we gradually produced the information and told people what problems we have, ... you will not believe me, but our religious leaders were much more progressive than we reproductive-health physicians." 

Scholars of religion at al-Azhar embraced the principles of family planning and approved most forms of contraception (permanent ones, like vasectomies, are allowed only in cases of medical necessity). They declared stem-cell research and in-vitro fertilization to be in accordance with Islam. On the other hand, they forbade surrogacy and donations of sperm and eggs. 

"People in Egypt and the Muslim world, ... religion plays an important role in their life," says Dr. Serour. "You have to be knowledgeable about this. You cannot escape from it, because people ask you: Is it haram [forbidden] or halal [permitted]?" 

Rather than viewing the religious framework at al-Azhar as a constraint, Dr. Serour argues that it has bolstered the effectiveness and reach of his work. The population-studies center is among the university's most active research institutes. It operates a clinic for the surrounding neighborhood; carries out training for doctors and outreach to imams; holds clinical trials supported by pharmaceutical companies; and sponsors regional conferences.

And it seems that Dr. Serour is also aware of the potential challenges:

For the time being, Dr. Serour isn't worried that Islamist fundamentalists who might be hostile to his work—many regularly inveigh against the teaching of reproductive health—will gain control of the campus. 

"If they got ahold of al-Azhar University, and the al-Azhar institutes, and the office of the grand imam of al-Azhar, there might be a change in policy," he says. "Not because al-Azhar is doing something against Islam," but because they are misinformed about reproductive health and about religious teachings. The only way to change their views, he says, is to educate them. 

Read the full article here.

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by Salman Hameed

Somewhere Ghalib, Manto and a host of other great Urdu writers must be rolling in their graves. I grew up reading and loving urdu novels and poetry. I don't remember much from the urdu textbooks used in schools (with the exception of Patras Bukhari's fantastic "Kuttay" ("Dogs"). So the new battle over the lack of sufficient Islam in Urdu textbooks is sad, baffling, and outrageous:

The Punjab government has excluded several key subjects from the fresh 10th class Urdu

text book edition published in February 2013 which is now being marketed for new students of matric. 

These subjects include ‘Islamic ideology of Pakistan’ and ‘Hazrat Umar (RA)- a Great Administrator’ besides removing persuasive Islam-related poems of even poets like Allama Iqbal. On the poetry side, all the Islamic poems including ‘Rabbe Kainaat’ of Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, ‘Mohsin-e-Insaniat (PBUH)’ (the Saviour of Humanity) by Mahirul Qadri, ‘Tulu-e-Islam’ (the rise of Islam) of Allama Iqbal, ‘Siddiq (RA)’ on Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddiq (RA) by Allama Iqbal, ‘Shaan-e-Taqwa’ (which is against drinking) by Allama Iqbal etc have also been removed in the new text book.

It is besides the point that Islamiat is a full separate subject that students go through in their 10th grade. But don't worry. Those wonderful, humble folks of Jamaat-e-Islami are there to protect Islam:

Jamaat-e-Islami Punjab Ameer Dr Syed Waeem Akhtar has express concern over exclusion of Islamic chapters from the course of class 10.

In a statement issued here Sunday, he said this disgusting act unveiled the dirty faces of the Punjab rulers. He said the rulers had become blind in the slavery of their foreign masters. He demanded the excluded chapters be included in the syllabus. He said Pakistan came into being in the name of Islam, hence there would be enforced Islamic code of life instead of ‘English code.’

But then this is a time when (some) candidates for elections in Pakistan are being asked to recite Qur'anic verses - or else their nomination papers would be rejected:

If Najma Bibi was unable to recite the Dua-e-Qanoot, she would have been unable to contest the upcoming elections, despite her status as a law-abiding and upright citizen, who paid her taxes regularly. 

However, her memory served her well and she breezed through the returning officer’s ‘ruthless’ scrutiny. 

Bibi, a 60-year-old political aspirant backed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, recited the dua seamlessly, prompting RO Jalaluddin Soomro to accept her nomination papers and declare her eligible to contest the general elections for a provincial assembly seat in Sindh. 

“The returning officer only asked me to recite the Dua-e-Qanoot, which I did confidently, so he accepted my papers,” Bibi, who intends to stand for PS-110 in Karachi, told The Express Tribune. 

The second question was a textbook classic. “How many Farz are in the Namaz-e-Isha?”
Under the Election Commission of Pakistan’s policy on judging the eligibility of candidates, the returning officers have initiated ‘ruthless’ scrutiny in accordance with the Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution. 

Such relentlessness was visible at City Courts, where sessions judges are performing duties as ROs. 

Like Bibi, all other candidates were asked to recite first Kalma, second Kalma or Dua-e-Qanoot, declare, on oath, whether or not they believe in one God (Allah), and to confirm whether they fulfill their religious obligations such as regularly offering prayers and performing Umrah or Hajj.

I left Pakistan a while ago but have visited it regularly. While some of the wacky things around religion were always present (for example, one of the requirements for getting a Pakistani passport as a Muslim is to declare that Ahmadis are non-Muslims!), this new Pakistan is fast becoming a stranger each passing day.

Okay - back to the issue of Urdu textbooks. What is interesting is that less than two years ago, a report suggested that Pakistan's education system is fueling religious discrimination. Perhaps, some of the changes to the urdu textbooks were in response to that report (you can download the pdf of the report: Connecting the Dots: Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistan), but now it seems that the government is backing down on this effort (also see this earlier post about a recent survey: This is Pakistan's most conservative generation).

Here is Pervez Hoodbhoy's take on this, Banning a textbook - the Punjab government panics:

This episode is important for only one reason: the new Urdu reader represented an attempt, albeit a feeble one, to remove the blinkers forced upon students by General Ziaul Haq’s education fantasia. The 1980s Islamisation of education meant that every subject — languages, geography, history, social studies, chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. — could only be viewed through a narrow prism. All else was to be shunned and filtered out. It is this attempt to break loose that Mr Abbasi finds so terribly objectionable. 

Pakistan’s educational system and the books used in schools unquestionably needs drastic reform. Our education does not prioritise the production of well-informed, socially responsible, thoughtful and civic-minded individuals. It does not ask for creating a mindset that can readily accept Pakistan’s diversity of religions, languages and cultures. It pays relatively little attention to what much of the rest of the world considers important: knowing and respecting the law of the land, preserving the environment, etc. Instead, what goes under the name of education here emphasises ritual, tradition and submission to authority. It is this which needs changing. 

The shameful retreat of the Punjab government before the forces of narrow-minded intolerance and prejudice augurs ill for the future. It negates the good work done by Shahbaz Sharif in the education sector. Sadly, yet another generation of children will be deprived of their right to an unblinkered view of the world. We, the citizens, must not allow such blackmail by any individual or group to succeed.

Read the full article here.

For those who understand Urdu, here is Zia Mohiuddin reading Patras Bukhari's Marhoom ki yaad main:

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by Salman Hameed

This is very well done. Artist Gavin Aung Than has animated Malala's story in a way that retains and conveys her charm and optimism. You can see the full illustrated story here: Malala Yousafzai - I Have the Right (tip from Slate). 

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by Salman Hameed

Two quick things:
First, here is the latest issue of The Rationalist Pakistan - the e-Magazine of the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (RSoP).

And here is a fantastic effort of getting kids interested in reading in and around Islamabad. In the absence of school libraries, this Bright Star Mobile Library is trying to revive the tradition of reading.

You can listen to the full story here, and here is a short excerpt:

A few years ago, Saeed Malik returned to Pakistan after 35 years living in the U.S., Italy and elsewhere, mostly working for the U.N.'s World Food Program. 

"I found [Pakistan] had changed a lot. Unfortunately, not for the better," he says. "The education had really tanked, gone down the tubes, in elementary education." 

Malik says the poor quality of education is having a ripple effect on the lives of children. He remembers talking to a group of boys, 9 to 16 years old.
...
So Malik decided to take books to the children. He says the idea of creating a mobile library came to him after seeing a similar project at the San Francisco Public Library. But Malik says he soon encountered the type of bureaucracy that can choke the life out of a project — even from Pakistan's Education Department. 

He waited six months just to get a single letter from the department, granting access to schools

You can listen to the full story here and you can check out (and donate) the site of Bright Star Mobile Library here.

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by Salman Hameed

This is from the recently concluded Karachi Literature Festival. Unfortunately, he is right about nuclear weapons. It will take a tragedy to wake people up on the indiscriminate evil of the bomb. Here is a sobering clip from Pervez Hoodbhoy:

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by Salman Hameed

Well, Malala's name has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Actually, this might be good for the Nobel committee, after giving the prize to the drone-happy Obama and then last year to the European Union(!). A win for Malala may actually restore some of the lost luster.

In the mean time, she has made her first public statement and has mentioned the establishment of a fund dedicated for girls' education. In many instances, this kind of coverage overwhelms the subject in the middle. But it is different with her. She has always been confident and self-assured. So check out the video of her statement in English (first one below) and in Urdu. Often people focus on the religion of her attackers. But, as you can see from the video, religion plays a major role in her life as well - and it is that that she credits for her well-being. This is the reason why it doesn't make much sense to make blanket statements - both good or bad - about religions. The way people inhabit and interact with religion is complex, and it is the specifics that matter. And there really isn't much redeemable about those Taliban who found any kind of justification (religious or tribal or political) in attacking a 14-year old girl. [On the crazy spectrum of things, please check out this earlier post: Crazy Conspiracy Theories: From Malala to Newtown, CT]

I hope Malala recovers her spunky-self. To remind you of her (and her charming father's) sprightly personality, I have also posted the short NYT documentary from a few years ago.

Here is Malala's statement in English:

Here is her statement on Urdu:


Here is the NYT documentary:

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by Salman Hameed

This week's Economist has an article that talks about the currents status of science in the Muslim world. It takes a broad approach and starts with the dismal state of current science in much of the Muslim world:

THE sleep has been long and deep. In 2005 Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries combined. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have produced only two Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics. Both moved to the West: the only living one, the chemist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, is at the California Institute of Technology. By contrast Jews, outnumbered 100 to one by Muslims, have won 79. The 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference spend a puny 0.81% of GDP on research and development, about a third of the world average. America, which has the world’s biggest science budget, spends 2.9%; Israel lavishes 4.4%. 

Many blame Islam’s supposed innate hostility to science. Some universities seem keener on prayer than study. Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, for example, has three mosques on campus, with a fourth planned, but no bookshop. Rote learning rather than critical thinking is the hallmark of higher education in many countries. The Saudi government supports books for Islamic schools such as “The Unchallengeable Miracles of the Qur’an: The Facts That Can’t Be Denied By Science” suggesting an inherent conflict between belief and reason.

But then it also talks about the rising publications from Turkey, Iran and other Muslim countries (I have also written about it here on Irtiqa: See the numbers for 2012 here and 2011 here)

In the 2000 to 2009 period Turkey’s output of scientific papers rose from barely 5,000 to 22,000; with less cash, Iran’s went up 1,300, to nearly 15,000. Quantity does not imply quality, but the papers are getting better, too. Scientific journals, and not just the few based in the Islamic world, are citing these papers more frequently. A study in 2011 by Thomson Reuters, an information firm, shows that in the early 1990s other publishers cited scientific papers from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (the most prolific Muslim countries) four times less often than the global average. By 2009 it was only half as often. In the category of best-regarded mathematics papers, Iran now performs well above average, with 1.7% of its papers among the most-cited 1%, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia also doing well. Turkey scores highly on engineering.

The article then goes on to highlight some of the challenges as well, especially those related to biological evolution. It cites my 2008 paper for the dismal statistics of evolution acceptance in the Muslim world. However, our more recent work based on oral interviews show a much more complicated picture. In particular, we find that people hear different things when they hear the mention of evolution or Darwin, and often times, it has little to do with science. This is also highlighted in the article:

Though such disbelief may be couched in religious terms, culture and politics play a bigger role, says Mr Hameed. Poor school education in many countries leaves minds open to misapprehension. A growing Islamic creationist movement is at work too. A controversial Turkish preacher who goes by the name of Harun Yahya is in the forefront. His website spews pamphlets and books decrying Darwin. Unlike his American counterparts, however, he concedes that the universe is billions of years old (not 6,000 years). 

But the barrier is not insuperable. Plenty of Muslim biologists have managed to reconcile their faith and their work. Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist who converted to Islam, quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of genetics, saying that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Science describes how things change; Islam, in a larger sense, explains why, she says. 

Others take a similar line. “The Koran is not a science textbook,” says Rana Dajani, a Jordanian molecular biologist. “It provides people with guidelines as to how they should live their lives.” Interpretations of it, she argues, can evolve with new scientific discoveries. Koranic verses about the creation of man, for example, can now be read as providing support for evolution.

And it is great that the article goes on to talk about the work on stem cells research that is going on in Iran - and also in Malaysia, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan:

Other parts of the life sciences, often tricky for Christians, have proved unproblematic for Muslims. In America researchers wanting to use embryonic stem cells (which, as their name suggests, must be taken from human embryos, usually spares left over from fertility treatments) have had to battle pro-life Christian conservatives and a federal ban on funding for their field. But according to Islam, the soul does not enter the fetus until between 40 and 120 days after conception—so scientists at the Royan Institute in Iran are able to carry out stem-cell research without attracting censure.

Here is a broad swath of issues in a condensed manner. Read the full article here. By the way, if you are interested, you should also check out this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education from last year: Does Islam Stand Against Science?

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by Salman Hameed

So here is some advice. If you don't agree with someone - however idiotic their position - don't resort to violence. There are a number of psychics operating here in western Massachusetts - and they are taking advantage of individuals - but that doesn't mean one has to go and attack their shops and stalls. So here comes the news that "leftist" students in Turkey have attacked a "fossil exhibit" at a metro station on the campus of Uludag University in Bursa (tip from Rainer Bromer):

A group of 30 students in Bursa have allegedly vandalized a fossil exhibition at Uludağ University, beating three security guards, breaking into the exhibition and damaging the fossils.  

The students recorded the attack, shouting slogans and taking photos with the damaged fossils, which they claim are fake. The exhibit has been organized by an anti-evolution group that claims the fossils on display prove that life forms have not changed over thousands of years, while others doubt the authenticity of the fossils. 

This is probably an exhibit of Harun Yahya's group - and yes, most of the stuff written by his organization is intellectual garbage. But evolution is a charged topic in Turkey and it maps onto the political landscape as well. This past May, I had a chance to witness a protest against a creationist conference in Marmara, and there was a sizable presence of cops (see pictures and my post here).

Here is Mustafa Akyol commenting on this affair: 

A very interesting attack took place the other day at Uludağ University in Bursa, a major Turkish city. A group of some 30 students broke into an exhibition, beat up three security guards, and shattered some of the objects on display. The damaged objects were none other than animal fossils, as this was a “fossil exhibition.” 

Now, before going deeper into the story let me stop here and ask what most Western readers would think when they hear about this news? My bet is that most of them would readily assume the militant students in question are “religious fundamentalists” who can’t stand to see facts about Darwinian evolution and, ultimately, science itself — the torch of reason, enlightenment and modernity.  

However, the facts in this incident were quite the opposite. The fossil exhibition was intended to promote not Darwinian evolution, but its main adversary: creationism, or the view that species have been divinely created rather than evolving gradually. And the students who attacked the exhibition were “fundamentalists” not of religion, but rather of one of its arch enemies: They were the members of the Turkish Communist Party or the “University Collectives,” a Marxist student association.

I hate to say this, but Akyol has a point here (by the way, Akyol used to be with the Harun Yahya group, then was an ID supporter, before settling in for theistic evolution: See my post - Mustafa Akyol's clarification on evolution). However, this is coming at the backdrop of student protests against the brutal crackdown by the AKP government. This doesn't excuse the actions here - but may provide the larger context of the incident. 

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by Salman Hameed

There is a nice piece by John Bohannon on Afghan universities in last week's issue of Science (you may need subscription to access the full article). Where do we even begin in a country that has been at war for over three decades, and where basic infrastructure is lacking outside its capitol and a few other cities. While it is a hopeful article, one can also see the challenges associated in building a good educational foundation:

In 2002, Afghanistan had 12 barely functioning universities; now it has 30, and they enroll roughly 100,000 students. Secondary education has enjoyed an even more impressive recovery, with the number of high school graduates increasing sevenfold since 2002.
In fact, that surge has overwhelmed the country's system of higher education. Admission to public universities is based on a nationally administered exam, and students pay no tuition. The Ministry of Higher Education projects that, without a significant increase in capacity, universities will be able to offer spots to only one in 10 students who apply in 2014. 

The anticipated leap in demand was one reason the government created AUAF as the country's only not-for-profit, private and independent university. The U.S. government is its main funder: The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has spent $200 million on higher education programs in Afghanistan since 2002, and half of its current tranche of $90 million for program funds is designated for AUAF. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah calls the school a “best-in-class institutional partner” and says the university is intended to show “the value of true, high-quality higher education in helping societies grow and develop.” 

Okay - it is good to see US money going into educational projects. But it is the large public universities that can have a larger impact:

But while AUAF may ultimately train the elites, the vast majority of Afghans seeking higher education will find it in the public university system. And that system is creaking.
Only a 10-minute drive away, Kabul University represents the yin to AUAF's yang on the circle of Afghan higher education. Its leafy, walled-in campus serves as a quiet oasis in a city that struggles to provide even the most basic amenities—water, power, waste disposal—for its 5 million residents. Its 20,000 students make it by far the largest university in the country. 

Founded in 1931, Kabul University is also the country's most prestigious, and its science programs are bulging at the seams. “This is introductory physics,” says Mohammad Arif, a chemist and dean of the faculty of science, poking his head into a lecture hall. The sweltering, windowless hall, with hundreds of students crammed into every seat right up to the top wings, looks more like the setting for a rock concert than a physics class.
“We are at double capacity,” Arif says. Some 1500 students are pursuing science and math degrees in the departments under his watch. The total does not include applied science majors in the university's schools of engineering, agriculture, and medicine. 

But it is vital to keep the long history of Afghanistan in mind - and the fact that it has largely been part of the big game between other powers: 

The current situation is a far cry from the recent past, says the 62-year-old Arif, who has taught at Kabul for 2 decades. “In the days of the Taliban, it was normal to have only one or two students in our classes,” says Arif, a cosmopolitan intellectual who was forced to wear a beard and turban during their reign. And that era was only the latest insult to the country's system of higher education. 

Arif had just finished his Ph.D. in chemistry in Moscow in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded his homeland. “That's when everything fell apart,” he says. The departure of Soviet troops in 1989 led to a civil war that subsided when the Taliban took over. “We just never recovered.”
...
It wasn't always so. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed with each other to invest in Afghan higher education. “The early 1960s was a golden age,” says AUAF's Fayez. There were academic exchanges and research collaborations with U.S. universities such as Purdue University, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Columbia University went a step further, building an institute in Kabul to train future teachers. Fayez was one of many Afghans in the program, which included a year in New York City. 

Not to be outdone, the Soviet Union invested heavily in science and engineering. It helped to build up Kabul's polytechnic universities, and by the 1970s Afghan academics were shuttling constantly between Moscow and Kabul. One reminder of that partnership is the fact that the older generation of Afghan scientists and engineers, like Arif, are just as likely to speak Russian as English. But the Soviet invasion soured that relationship. 

Nevertheless, the literacy rate has hovered around 20%. It is now up to 28%,  but there is still a long way to go. There are some positive signs now and I hope that the country see an end to the war at some point.

Read the full article here.

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by Salman Hameed

This is really bizarre. The Iranian government has decided to bar women from taking certain courses. It seems that one-half of the Iranian population was getting well-educated and the other half feared that they will be left behind. So, of course, the obvious solution is to restrict access to education:

In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation by Iran's most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be "single gender" and effectively exclusive to men. 

It follows years in which Iranian women students have outperformed men, a trend at odds with the traditional male-dominated outlook of the country's religious leaders. Women outnumbered men by three to two in passing this year's university entrance exam. 

Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.

And what subjects will bar women?

Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country's leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.

Yes - we don't need women in those fields. What do they know about atoms and nuclei? Or about circuits and literature? Oh - but they definitely don't know about oil:

The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.

Yikes! But in Iran's defense, their chief rival is Saudi Arabia - and it is hard to keep up with their misogynistic laws. This is the regional misogyny arms race.

Read the full article here.

By the way, this reminded me of the gender-based quota system that Pakistan used to have for admission into medical colleges. The score requirement for female students used to be 7-8 percentage points higher than the male students. However, in the mid-80s, a lawsuit was filed against this gender discrimination, and the courts ruled in favor of gender equity. That tilted the ratio of students decidedly in favor of females. I think it was fantastic that the courts didn't buy into the arguments that "women just get married and don't become professionals".

I hope the Iranian government reverses this idiotic decision.

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by Salman Hameed

Our inaugural Friday Irtiqa Journal Club starts with a paper by Nasser Mansour: Science Teachers' Views of Science and Religion vs. the Islamic Perspective: Conflicting or Compatible?

I think this was a slightly longer paper than would be good for the venue. I will try to pick papers on the shorter side - but sometimes the choices are limited.

Summary:
The results in the paper are based on open-ended written surveys with 75 Egyptian science teachers, with follow-up interviews with 15 of the participants. I think it is important to note that the study is not based in Cairo or Alexandria - the large cosmopolitan cities of Egypt. The teachers in the study are from the Gharbia Governorate of Egypt, whose capital, Tanta, is located between Cairo and Alexandria. It is quite possible that we are seeing more conservative views on science and religion than we would find in the larger cities. 

The key finding of the paper reaffirms the idea that religion is central for these science teachers, and their views on science are shaped through that particular lens: 

[T]he findings suggest that participants’ views of the relationship between science and a specific religion (Islam) confirmed the centrality of teachers’ personal religious be- liefs to their own thoughts and views concerning issues of both science and Islam. This centralization, in some cases, appeared to lead teachers to hold a conflicting relationship, hence to a creation of a false contradiction between science and Islam. Therefore, it could be concluded that teachers’ personal Islamic-religious beliefs inform their beliefs about the nature of science and its purpose.

And this is how they viewed the relation between science and religion:

The numbers are relatively small, but yet it is striking that most of the teachers view integration as the mode of science and religion interaction. I was also struck by the fact that "Dialogue" for most teachers meant science in the service of religion. 

For some reason when talking about these results the author lumped the conflict and independence categories into one, which I think is not only problematic but also did not seem warranted based on the responses he got for the two categories. But this is what he says about it: 

The teachers in the second group, those who perceived a conflicting or an independent relationship between science and religion, however, see science as suspect, either because of the unreliability of scientific methods or the need to use different methods to consider something from an alternative viewpoint.

Interestingly, some of the conflict responses stemmed from the "eurocentric" impression of science and a distrust of western knowledge. But the numbers are too small (5)  to make too much of it.

But the author, in general, also found that some science teachers in the survey held a "naive" views of the nature of science and of religion itself: 

In this study, some teachers did not ascribe just to naive views of NOS but also to naive views of the Islamic perspective of science and scientific investigation. They argued that science is an ever-changing phenomenon and scientists’ assumptions and predictions may be wrong, whereas the teachings of Islam are eternal and not subject to human error. The purpose of doing research in science, they argued, is to validate the Qur’an or establish the truth of the Qur’an.

A few additional comments on the paper: 
1. I think the key results from the paper are not that surprising - but it is important to conduct these studies. It is clear that religion plays a dominant role in the worldview of these science teachers, and they evaluate everything from that perspective. Therefore, it is a reasonable suggestion to suggest that the training of teachers take this background into account. 

2. My main criticism of the paper lies in the fact that the Mansour uses a normative definition of the relationship between Islam and science (these are peppered throughout the paper), and described it as positive. He uses examples from history to make his point. Two problems with this approach: 

First, we have to be careful when using the term "science" historically, especially in ascribing it to medieval times. The nature of scientific inquiry has changed a lot over the past few centuries, and it is difficult to say much about the relationship between "science" and "religion" during that time. 

Second, and there is no single relation between Islam and science. It depends on what specifics are we talking about. Islam is interpreted by individuals. If one interprets that there the mountains and valleys were formed because of a worldwide flood, then for that interpretation, there is a clash between Islam and science. Ditto, if one interprets Islamic doctrines to say that humans are not a product of evolution from prior animals (a question about evolution was part of the survey in the paper). On the other hand, if one has an interpretation that allows plate tectonics for geology and evolution for the rise of humans, then there is no clash. Or some may find an interpretation that may lend itself for dialogue or integration. But all and all, there is no single relation between Islam and science - rather there is multitude of relations depending on interpretations and on what particular scientific idea we are talking about. In fact, there are often contradictory views within individuals (for example, Big Bang theory - dialogue; biological evolution - clash), and it will be fascinating to explore how some of these science teachers deal with contradictions.  

3. This is more for my own research interest, but I noticed that the question on evolution was included in the written-survey. However, Mansour only talked about it in the clash narrative. But the vast majority talked about dialogue and integration models, and I'm curious to see how they viewed evolution. I think this will highlight the complexity of the responses and they may not fall neatly into Barbour's four categories used in the paper.

4. I think the paper underscores the need to explain how science is done and why people do it. This is a science education problem worldwide, but perhaps the issue gets exacerbated in places where religion may be considered as an arbiter for how nature works. 

Thoughts from others? Also, this is the first attempt at the journal club format. Let me know if you have suggestions on that as well.

I will post the title of the paper for next Friday's journal club later today.

_________________
Mansour, N. (2011), Science Teachers' Views of Science and Religion vs. the Islamic Perspective: Conflicting or Compatible?, Sci. Ed., 95: 281–309. doi: 10.1002/sce.20418

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by Salman Hameed

First the good news. Mariam Sultana has recently received a PhD in astrophysics in Pakistan (tip from Anila Athar Hasan). She works in extragalactic astronomy and her research focuses on understanding the stability and the formation of Ring galaxies (Ring galaxies are actually quite awesome. You can see the image of one below. Some, may be most, of them are a result of a collision between two galaxies of different sizes. You can read about their formation here). This is a tough area of research and one of her PhD. advisors, James Binney, is one of the leading authorities in the field of galaxies and theoretical astrophysics. I used two of his co-authored books in graduate school, and both were tough and incredibly useful books (Yes, I still remember sleepless nights trying to solve problem-sets in Galactic Dynamics by Binney and Tremaine :)). So first of all, congratulations to Mariam Sultana!!

As if getting a PhD. in astrophysics is not challenging enough, she had to fight off some idiotic misconceptions and incredible bureaucracy. The misconceptions have to do with the confusion between astronomy and astrology. This is not limited to Pakistan. I have had to explain the difference many many many times. However, some people consider astrology to be against Islam - and then take it out on astronomy. One of my uncles used to confuse astronomy and astrology. But even after I would explain the difference (that astronomy is basically physics as applied to the workings of stars and galaxies), he would still mutter "uhmm...yes, but it is still against Islam". However, I should hasten to add that far more people were also appreciative of astronomy - and that is still the case as evidenced by the thriving amateur astronomy scene in Pakistan. But Mariam experienced the confusion from the parents of the kids she was teaching - and that could become more complicated:

Instead, she finds herself warding off the invective heaped on her and clearing the misconception that she has studied astrology, a pseudoscience which is considered haram.
“The students somehow confuse my field of study, extragalatic astronomy, with fortune telling or palm reading,” she told The Express Tribune. “Their parents do the same thing and advise their children to stay away from the subject.”

But this is still a relatively minor problem compared to the bureaucracy she had to face. This is an additional challenge that is common in the developing world - but she Mariam's perseverance paid off in the end. I also had a brief phone conversation with her on my last trip to Karachi in 2011 - and she mentioned some of the technical difficulties associated with her PhD. Here are some more details: 

Her work was supervised by Dr Salakhutdin Nuritdinov, a professor at the National University of Uzbekistan. He was appointed in 2006 to FUUAST [Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology] through the Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) foreign faculty hiring programme. Dr Nuritdinov is a pioneer in the field and allowed Sultana to further develop mathematical models that he had created. “I didn’t feel worthy enough to do such high standard work,” said Sultana. “It was Dr Nuritdinov who led me all the way through.” In her thesis, she investigated the instabilities and physical conditions which gave galaxies their ring shape. 

Sultana was thrilled when two eminent professors agreed to become examiners for her doctoral thesis. One of them was James Binney, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford. He also heads the Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics. The second examiner was Dr Ana Katrin Schenk, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at  the University of California. Dr Binney wrote to her and said that “[Sultana’s] thesis represents a considerable body of work, and from a technical aspect, it is surely worthy of a doctorate.” Sultana plans to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in the United Kingdom. “But first I want to supervise all the PhDs which were left incomplete because of Dr Nuritdinov’s departure from Pakistan,” she said. She is currently supervising the doctoral students at FUUAST’s mathematical sciences department.
...
Sultana did admit that there were many hurdles that she had to cross in order to earn her degree. During her studies, she found out that KU did not accept foreign supervisors unless they agreed to stay in Pakistan for at least seven years. Her supervisor only planned to stay in the country for four years. “I submitted the abstract of my thesis to the university in August 2006 and it remained pending for the next 22 months because of foreign supervisor issue,” she said. Sultana even approached the chairman of the HEC, who had advised her to ask Dr Nuritdinov to be her supervisor. “The authorities at KU did not even listen to him,” she said. 

Finally, in October 2008, her abstract was accepted after she replaced Dr Nuritdinov with Dr Shahid Qureshi, a Pakistani professor at the Institute of Space and Planetary Astrophysics. Two months before this happened, Sultana’s research paper was published in a Russian journal called “Astrofizika” (Astrophysics) and was later printed in another journal, Astrophysics. But after accepting her abstract, KU kept on insisting that she spend a year in the MPhil programme, as is the rule. Dr Nuritdinov admitted that he was not expecting Sultana to get the PhD because of “the bureaucratic behaviour and incompetence of upper-level academics.” He was pleasantly surprised when Sultana broke the news to him.

Ultimately, this is a success story and I'm sure she will shine in her post-doctoral work as well. Best wishes to Mariam Sultana. 

Read the full article in the Tribune Express here. 

A few months ago, I had posted about another Pakistani astrophysicist, Nergis Mavalvala. See the earlier post: Pakistani, Queer, Woman, Astrophysicist: Journal "Science" highlights Nergis Mavalvala.

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by Salman Hameed

There is a lot of talk about the Gulen Movement in Turkey. You can get as wide a range of reactions as possible. Some have said that this is a fantastic example of a group that preaches tolerance and emphasizes inter-faith dialogue. The schools it runs are good in math and science, as the founder of the movement believes that science is essential for modern Muslims and that building schools is better than building mosques. On the other hand, some people call the movement a cult and are concerned that it may have an insidious agenda. One thing is clear: The Gulen movement has a lot of influence in Turkey.  But how this influence is going to be used? I don't know. But it is interesting that Gulen schools are all over the world, including the US (they are called Harmony schools and are part of charter school system). They are indeed good in math and science, and couple of these are amongst the top schools in the US. But they have come under the spotlight because of visa issues. Now 60 Minutes has done a report on them. Here is the video (tip from Kamil Pasha - an excellent blog for all things Turkish):


Also, The Atlantic has a recent article about a visit to a Gulen school in Istanbul. I don't think it illuminates much, but here is a bit that is a source of friction in Turkey:

The methods and approach of Gülen schools toward religious instruction has fueled lots of speculation about the movement's intentions. Governments in Central Asia in particular are suspicious that the Islamic values espoused by the Gulen movement could potentially pose a challenge to the political status quo in the region. 

Hoping to dispel misconceptions, the 37-year-old vice-principal of Fatih Koleji, Metin Demirci, who taught for five years in the movement's schools in Kazakhstan, stressed that all the schools closely follow the curriculum of the public schools in whichever country they are operating. 

In Turkey, he said the basic tenets of Islam are taught in a weekly class lasting 80 minutes that also offers instruction on other world religions. "Students learn our religious principles and other religious principles," Demirci said. Faculty members, he claimed, try to serve as role models of Islamic piety, leading by example. 

While Fatih Koleji has a prayer room, no student is forced to pray, Demirci continued. Out of 200 students at the school, only about 10 percent of the children follow the Muslim practice of prayer five times a day, he estimated. "They must want it."
One foreign teacher at another of the movement's estimated 30 schools in the Istanbul metropolitan area commented that most students are drawn from religious families, but their faith does not appear to "rub off" on more secular classmates. 

One ritual from Turkey's ardently secular public schools, though, appears less prominent at Fatih Koleji. Demirci played down the importance of "Our Oath," a nationalist pledge that students usually recite daily. "It is related to democracy and improving democracy," he said. "I believe in the next two years, we will stop saying this because we don't need it. With democracy, every small child has the right to say anything they choose."

Read the full article here.

Just yesterday, Pakistan's Express Tribune also carried an oped piece that talked about Gulen schools in Pakistan as well as the relief efforts of the movement after the earthquake a few years ago and the floods in 2010. I know that Karachi definitely hosts Gulen schools. The author of oped piece was invited on a trip to Turkey by the Gulen movement (don't know why...) and the article is about the trip. Here is a bit about aid connection to Pakistan:

The movement is run by volunteers and our visit was no exception. Almost every evening one of these volunteers, all personal friends of Koken, used to invite us for dinner. This enabled us to savour genuine Turkish cuisine and to see the homes of middle-class professionals. What impressed us was the warm hospitality of which food was just one aspect. Most people, especially the few women whom we met, could not speak English but the translation was always available and the conversation never slackened. What impressed me most was a visit to Kimse Yok Mu. This humanitarian organisation has 23 branches in Turkey and around 200,000 volunteers. They have carried out relief work in 63 countries out of which one is Pakistan. Soon after the 2005 earthquake, 29 trucks were sent to Pakistan and eventually $11 million worth of aid was provided. The most enduring legacy is the establishment of 12 schools which will benefit thousands of children in the years to come. Nor was this the only time Kimse Yok came to Pakistan. In 2010, in the wake of devastating floods, they came again with $12 million worth of goods and services. The Turkish volunteers were both courteous and efficient, something I witnessed myself during my two visits to Muzaffarabad in 2005. 

The Fatih University, although a private, fees-taking body, charges foreign students less than those who live in Turkey. It teaches most subjects in English and, therefore, may become a likely destination for Pakistani students who are on the lookout for higher education at lower cost.

Well...okay. Yes, but we also need to know a bit more about the organization. Also, I hope that they focus on developing scientific thinking rather than just the applications of science and hope they keep religion out of science. In addition, I'm curious if they include biological evolution in their biology curriculum - otherwise, their science will stay quite limited, especially for the 21st century. If they don't have an agenda beyond providing a good education, then, yes, it may turn out to be a good destination for Pakistani students.

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by Salman Hameed

I think there is little debate over the usefulness of education. This is one thing that most world leaders would agree on. And many are also willing to spend a lot of money on it. But what does it take to turn around education standards in a developing country?

Some of the Gulf states in the Middle East are, of course, in the midst of an education experiment. Last year I had a chance to visit Doha for a conference and saw branch campuses of a number of American universities, from Cornell Medical School to Carnegie Mellon University (see this earlier post: Education City in Qatar). As far as I understand it, most of the costs for these campuses is paid for by the government of Qatar. Will these campuses transform the higher education landscape in Qatar? Perhaps more importantly, will it create a body of students with critical thinking skills necessary for the sciences, and creative independence necessary for the humanities? I think we have to keep an eye on this and we should be able to assess some successes and failures in the next few years.

A few days ago, Pervez Hoodbhoy raised a similar question about the school education. One of the political parties in Pakistan have recently called for giving away free laptops to kids. Pervez, rightly, asks the question, is it the laptop that is fundamentally going to make the difference? He points out that at one point television was considered the singular solution to the education problem, at another time, Apple 2C computers. And so now, we have the laptops:

Instead, the central question is: how exactly are these laptops to combat poverty and ignorance, or improve education? The answer is not clear in any developing country but is even muddier in Pakistan. The purchased computers did not come loaded with school books, supplementary educational materials, or programmes like “Comic Life” which make math learning fun. There are no locally-developed programmes, and none in Urdu or any local language. Nor have schoolteachers been trained to deal with computers as a teaching tool. Of course, there will be some Google searching and perhaps some educational material will be downloaded. But overwhelmingly they will be used for chatting, surfing, or video games. 

The false notion of technology as a magic wand has made our rulers euphoric from time to time. Few Pakistanis will remember the bulk purchase of Apple-II C computers for schools at the end of the 1980s. General Ziaul Haq’s minister of education, Dr Muhammad Afzal, (now deceased), was a progressive man in a religiously-charged government. Somehow he was seized with the notion that computers would revolutionise everything. In one of my occasional meetings with him, I unsuccessfully sought to persuade him that his idea was fundamentally flawed. Sadly, the warning turned out to be correct: it is likely that many machines were not even turned on before they were junked en masse 10-15 years later.
Earlier on, a still bigger revolution had been promised. Pakistan Television was founded on the premise that its core purpose would be education. At the invitation of the Pakistan government, a Unesco team visited Pakistan and met with the ministers of law, broadcasting, and education. In a subsequent report the team leaders, HR Cassirer and TS Duckmanton, wrote: 

“We arrived in Lahore on October 10, 1960, where we were the guests of the Regional Director of Radio Pakistan, as well as the Provincial Department of Education. We pursued our consultations with officials concerned with the following: university and college education, primary and secondary education, vocational education, village aid, broadcasting, the Arts Council”. The report document does not even mention entertainment or news broadcasts, but has paragraphs on how telecourses should be conducted. 

But PTV never made a sizeable contribution to education. For 50 years its broadcast content has been almost exclusively entertainment and news. In this period PTV has produced only two documentary serials that sought to popularise science for the general public, one in 1994 and the other in 2002.

Though to be fair, PTV did start showing education programs from the Allama Iqbal Open University aimed to increase adult literacy. These were first shown in the afternoon, and I think later as part of PTV2. I don't what happened to  PTV2 and Open University programs. Are they still on? But I think if done properly, that can still be very effective. I know that Indonesia used its satellite channels to provide educational programs across the archipelago. And televisions are indeed available across the board. But that success in Pakistan via this route has remained relatively limited. However, there may exist a study that has looked at it more systematically. If anyone knows the reference, drop me a line.

Pervez doesn't dismiss the use of new technology for education. But his emphasis is on good education values - a system that encourages learning over memorization - and that requires a change of mindset:

The bottom line: good education requires planning, organisation, integrity, resources and, above all, a mindset that is oriented towards the future and not the past. Techy hi-fi stuff has glitz, but it’s really the sub-stratum of thought that matters.

And that may apply to the experiments in higher education in the Gulf states as well.

Read the full article here.

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by Salman Hameed

As part of  TEDx Pioneer Valley, here is a talk on science education in Afghanistan. I had/have no idea of the status of science and science education in Afghanistan. For example, we do hear a bit about primary and secondary education, especially when it comes to girls' education, but what kind and level of science is included in such schools? I'm sure there is more to the picture, but here is one snapshot. This is Camilla Barry on Teaching Everyday Science in Afghanistan:

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